Weekend Box Office: American Reunion enters the kill zone

Stifler was back. Stifler’s mom was back. Finch, Oz, Kevin, all back. Eugene Levy never left. And yet the latest sequel to the pie-fucking classic American Pie, adding to a mythology so complicated that the greatest chart in Wikipedia history was created to accommodate it, could not come close to upending The Hunger Games on its second week. On the holiest of all box office weekends, The Hunger Games passed the $300 million mark with a healthy $33.5 million in its third week, enjoying the #1 spot for just a little longer before Stoogemania sweeps the nation on Friday. That left American Reunion to scrape together $21.5 million for second place, which isn’t a bad number against a $50 million budget, especially considering the presumably robust DVD business that had been sustaining the franchise during the stretch when it was just Levy carrying the torch. The 3-D version of Titanic finished in third with $17.35 million, which also isn’t a bad number considering the modest cost of needless 3-D conversion and a nation of 14-year-olds who are grossed out by the thought of seeing the film that inspired their conception.

In limited release, the long-awaited return of preppie auteur Whit Stillman proved reasonably fruitful, with Damsels In Distress making $16,000 per screen on four screens. The Nanni Moretti religious dramedy We Have a Pope also did good business among urban heathens, with $10,500 on three screens.